Students in secondary school typically complete a wide variety of non-fiction writing projects from essays to oral reports. To provide students with a fun respite from the world of facts, create a short story project. During the project, each student writes a story of a certain length and includes common elements of literature such as metaphor and theme. Story projects offer flexibility and often require a minimum number of pages, specific character archetypes or the presentation of a moral or lesson.
A comic book project includes the language and writing skills necessary to create a short story and combines them with the artistic skills necessary to draw pictures. A comic book project typically uses similar requirements to a writing project with an extra emphasis on drawing clear characters. By completing a visual project, students learn the necessity of "showing" instead of "telling" and understand that characters and stories consist of action.
Secondary students read a number of plays during their time in high school. To provide students with a project based in theater, assign the task of performing a scene from a play. Students learn the skills of memorizing lines, conveying emotion as they view the material within a popular work of literature in a new light. When a student takes the role of actor, he gains a new understanding of the emotional resonance and drama within the written word.
Many dread the act of standing before a class and reciting lines from a presentation. However, a presentation on historical figures offers a chance for new creativity. Instead of explaining the life and works on an author, a student presents herself as an author. The student steps into the role of the author as she explains why she created certain literature, the themes within her writing and the exciting events in her life that inspired her. To provide a group element to the project, place students in groups of three to five where the authors sit together and talk about a subject for several minutes.